Innovating with Purpose: A Hands-on Journey into Functional, Safe and Sustainable Advanced Materials

Every year, usually, a vibrant community of young researchers and seasoned experts convenes in the historic centre of Venice for the Venice School. The 13th edition of the Venice Training School took place from 9th to 13th June 2025 to focus on advancing knowledge and practice in Safe-and-Sustainable-by-Design (SSbD) assessment and decision-making for advanced materials (AdMa) and chemicals, and explore cutting-edge methodologies for ensuring the safety, functionality, and sustainability of innovative materials.

On 5 September 2025, the Polymer Additives Academy 2025 hosted its second (of four) session at the NHOW Hotel in Milan (Italy), bringing together more than 120 participants (80 on-site and 45 online). Organized by the PLANETS partner Greenchemicals, the event served as a platform for dialogue between industry experts, researchers, technicians, and university students, focusing on the latest advances in polymer additives and sustainability.

This second session was focused on styrenics polymers, concretely on insulating foams. The program day’s agenda covered a broad spectrum of topics, from the evolution of XPS foams and low-halogen flame retardants to Safe-and-Sustainable-by-Design (SSbD) approaches, recycling strategies, and CAM criteria (Minimum Environmental Criteria (CAM – Criteri Ambientali Minimi)). Contributions from academia, industry, and institutions highlighted both regulatory developments and technological solutions driving innovation in the sector.

Of course, PLANETS could not miss it and many partners attended the event: Carl-Christoph Höhne, Benedikt Bitzer (Fraunhofer ICT), Joséphine Steck, Marie Carriere, Nienke Ruijter (CEA), Laura Magnasco, Martina Riccio (RINA), Tobias Moss, Roberto Chinchilla Pardos (Budenheim), Wendel Wohlleben, Ayse Ay (BASF), Martin Himly, Sabine Hofer, Norbert Hofstätter (PLUS), Vanessa Alvear (AIMEN), Herbert Scharnagl, Leonhard Ritter (Steinbacher Dämmstoff GmbH), Thomas Hennequin (TNO), Poornima Nagesh (Radboud University), Anita Sosnowska, Szymon Zdybel (QSAR Lab), as well as the hosts of the event, Micaela Lorenzi, Sabrina Zambotti, Valentina Pelliccioli, Barbara Chinello, Sofia Luise, Davide Lecchi, Doris Lemi (Greenchemicals).

A highlight of the event was the oral presentation by Carl Christoph Höhne (Fraunhofer ICT) and Thomas Hennequin (TNO) entitled “Safe-and-Sustainable-by-Design (SSbD) Flame Retardants for Insulation Foams – the EU PLANETS Project Approach”, which provided valuable insights into how SSbD principles can be applied to flame retardants in styrenic insulation materials.

Both presentations are available in the PLANETS Community in Zenodo under DOI: 10.24406/publica-5377.

The strong interest confirmed the event’s success in reaching a highly relevant audience and showcasing collaborative European efforts in advancing sustainability in polymer additives.

Additionally, a hybrid meeting of the flame retardants case study of PLANETS was also organised, to discuss the status and next steps in the project.

Some impressions of the Polymers Academy and the internal meeting:

On 16 June 2025, Andreas Falk from BNN had the great pleasure of leading a workshop on Safe-and-Sustainable-by-Design (SSbD) for high school students at HTBLA Kaindorf in Austria.

After setting the stage about the three pillars of sustainability, the three dimensions of SSbD, its indicators and 5 steps, as a real-life SSbD implementation example Andreas introduced the case studies of the PLANETS project, which is developing safer and more sustainable alternatives for chemicals with surfactant, flame retardant or plasticising functionalities. All three of these chemical classes have a large chemical-market share, highlighting the importance of research and EU-funded projects for improving chemicals that affect our daily lives.

Many teenagers in the audience will be the engineers and scientists of tomorrow, future professionals who will play a big role for reaching the EU’s aim to become climate-neutral by 2050. With this in mind, the engagement of workshop’s participants in performing a practical exercise of Tier 1 SSbD assessment of an everyday consumer product assured us that, if we invest in educating our young people, we can shape the health of people and planet in the future!

On 23 June 2025, the NSC Working Group on Safe and Sustainable by Design (SSbD), Innovation & Regulation organised an online workshop on “SSbD scenarios for advanced and incremental innovations” as a collaboration effort among several EU-funded projects: AlChemiSSts, DESIDERATA, PLANETS and SUNRISE. 

Not all innovation scenarios in SMEs and industry are the same. Current JRC SSbD guidance and also the Portfolio Sustainability Assessment (PSA) / Cefic concepts leave room for tailoring the SSbD approach within a tiered framework. Scenarios support the tailoring, such that SSbD is not just another burden, but increases overall competitiveness. 

But how should a SSbD scenario be described? This was exactly the aim of this first workshop.  

The workshop tested aspects that described a scenario by knowledge that is available at early innovation stages withreal-world cases kindly provided by innovators from the projects AlChemiSSts, DESIDERATA, PLANETS and SUNRISE. Shortlisted aspects included the professional environment (start-up, SME or industry), the sector of application (B2B vs B2C), the innovative height (incremental or advanced), R&D project budget, and other aspects that would be known to the innovator before starting any lab work.

EUIndTech2025 is the new EU flagship event, in which the two cyclical events, “Conference on Industrial Technologies” and “EuroNanoForum” are merged. This year it was done during the Polish presidency of the EU Council in Krakow, Poland. The EUIndTech2025 brought together more than 800 stakeholders from academia, research organizations, industry, NGOs and policymakers to discuss the state-of-the-art technologies, challenges and trends. 

BNN’s CEO Andreas Falk in his role as part of NSC’s coordination team and as partner in PLANETS, organised a NSC Session, having Prof. Martin Himly (PLUS) (chair of the NSC Working Group on Education and partner in PLANETS) as moderator and Prof. Eva Valsami-Jones (UoB) (member of NSC’s Coordination Team) as speakers in key roles of the session. Together with other members of the NSC and further stakeholders they were on stage at EUIndTech25 for the NSC-session entitled “Designing Safe and Sustainable Materials and Chemicals – SSbD Implementation and Digitalization” on June 2nd, 2025. 

The NSC session addressed the importance of integrated approaches, data-related expectations, advantages and challenges for ultimately balancing ecological, societal, and economic goals for a more sustainable future. The session was moderated by Martin Himly with oral presentations given by Eugenia Valsami-Jones, Andreas Künkel (BASF) and Garbine Guiu Etxeberria (EC, DG RTD). For the panel discussion the speakers were joined by Andreas Falk, Daniel Hubert (VisterNova), Peter Klein (FhG) and Mary B. Walsh (Honeywell).  

As a follow-up of the discussions during the session, the panellists formulated 3 paragraphs as output of the session, which will be part of the Malopolska Declaration. 

NSC members highlighted during the NSC session the work done within the NSC projects, PLANETS among others, to a very engaged audience in Krakow.

From 11-15 May 2025 took place the SETAC 2025, the 35th Annual Meeting of the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry in Europe, at the Austria Center in Vienna. 

Under the overarching theme “Innovation for Tomorrow: Progress in Safe and Sustainable Concepts”, the conference emphasized the need for integration of cutting-edge innovations with safety and sustainability considerations, through implementation and expansion of the Safe and Sustainable by Design (SSbD) thinking, as well as it application beyond the development of new molecules and products (e.g., also to cities, land use and landscapes). The conference attracted roughly 3000 people to the capital of Austria, from many various stakeholder groups, i.e., academia, industry, innovators, EU institutions, national authorities, etc. 

Several PLANETS partners participated in the conference (CEA, BASF, BNN, AIMEN, TNO, PLUS, Radboud University) and spread the word about PLANETS in their three oral and three poster presentations: 

On Monday, May 12th there were several sessions on SSbD:  

• Joséphine Steck (CEA) gave an oral presentation in session 6.05 “Implementing Holistic SSbD Approaches to Chemicals and Materials: What Do Academia, Industry, Regulators and Policymakers Propose?”. Under the title “An auto-diagnostic SSbD tool to facilitate the integration of Safe and Sustainable by Design approach in the innovative stage”, Joséphine presented a simplified SSbD evaluation to reduce data needs, time, and expertise, making SSbD more accessible while maintaining its core goals. A three-tiered approach was introduced, and the presentation focused then on the first tier. A questionnaire was developed to compare options across four SSbD dimensions: safety, environment, economy, and social. Users answered simple questions for each dimension, with results providing an overall percentage score, highlighting gaps, and guiding further assessments. This assessment has been tested on molecules, products, and processes within the CLEANHYPRO and PLANETS projects, showing its flexibility as a quick pre-assessment tool. Its main benefit is boosting the agility of research strategies by identifying SSbD gaps and next steps. In higher tiers, expert-driven assessments will dive deeper into each dimension. As outlook, the PLANETS project is refining the tool to better comply with industrial needs. 

• Wendel Wohlleben (BASF) gave an oral presentation also in session 6.05. In his talk entitled “Value creation and tiering: incentives of SSbD integration into industrial innovation projects with LCA and measured safety screenings”, Wendel explored how to convince companies to take up more quantitative SSbD approaches, and how to generate incentives by strong tiering and tailoring the SSbD approach to the specific scenario. The topic will be followed up with the entire community in the NSC online workshop on June 23rd. 

On Tuesday, May 13th: 

• Ayse Ay (BASF) had a poster in the session 6.11 “Flame Retardants Regulatory and Circular Economy Challenges”. Under the title “Safe and Sustainable by Design, Scoping, and Simplified Assessment of Alternative Flame Retardants for Use in Polymer Insulation Foams”, Ayse provided insights into the implementation of SSbD at the molecular formulation level for over 70 flame retardants. She shared results from the Simplified Assessment Questionnaire for key alternative flame retardants in each insulation foam class, highlighting the questionnaire’s discriminatory power and limitations. 

• Matiss Reinfelds (BNN) had a poster in the Session 6.05 “Implementing Holistic SSbD Approaches to Chemicals and Materials: What Do Academia, Industry, Regulators and Policymakers Propose?” on “Redesigning for the Future: Applying Safe and Sustainable by Design (SSbD) Principles in High-Impact Chemical Industries” with results from our project PLANETS. The poster served as basis for the discussion on SSbD implementation in an industrial setting. The poster is publicly available under DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.15463912. 

On Wednesday, May 14th, the focus turned to science communication in the session 6.06  “Communication for Tomorrow: From Experimental Design Towards Societal Impact” with an oral presentation from BNN’s Caitlin Ahern. Under the title “Getting Beyond the Bubble: Measuring Effectiveness of Outreach Activities for SSbD-Related EU Projects”, Caitlin assessed social media activities to reach out to a wider community, presenting PLANETS as an example of successful practices. 

On Thursday May 15th, Asif Pasha Mohammed (AIMEN) had a poster entitled “Digital Product Passports for Improved Consumer Transparency and Health Impact Awareness”, in the session 1.06 “Data-Driven Toxicology: Practical Applications and Insights into Using Existing and Emerging Data in Support of Human and Environmental Health”. In his poster, Asif highlighted how Digital Product Passports improve consumer engagement through transparent, health-focused data. It emphasizes the importance of standardized, interoperable systems for real-time decision-making. Integrating trusted sources like ECHA/REACH builds consumer confidence and supports safer product choices. 

Additionally, task 2.3 was kicked-off in Vienna, having the Prater as an inspiring location for great discussions in the internal meeting! 

Below some impressions of the SETAC25 including a video! 

The 2^nd edition of the Foam Technology Days took place from 21 to 22 May 2025 in Pfinztal, Germany, focusing on particle and extrusion foam technologies with a special emphasis on recycling. Organised by our colleagues from Fraunhofer ICT, the event gathered around 60 participants from across the international foam industry — including material producers, machine manufacturers, processors, and end users — as well as academics.

Experts from Borealis, KraussMaffei Extrusion, BEWI, Ruch Novaplast, Steinbacher Dämmstoff, Fraunhofer ICT and other companies reported on their professional practice and shared their experiences in the industrial application of foam technology. Their contributions highlighted the sector’s shift towards sustainability and circularity.

Participants also had the opportunity to explore the Fraunhofer ICT labs and pilot plants during an on-site tour, getting insight into their ongoing research, including efforts to map the entire recycling chain from rePS (recycled polystyrene) to rEPS (recycled expanded polystyrene) and rXPS (recycled extruded polystyrene).

PLANETS was also present at the event, with an oral presentation by Herbert Scharnagl from Steinbacher Dämmstoff GmbH, titled “From Waste to Value: The Path to Greener LDPE Insulation”, presenting among others the project and their involvement in the flame retardants case study.

The Foam Technology Days once again proved to be an invaluable platform for knowledge exchange, showcasing innovations that are shaping a more sustainable future for foam materials.